I haven’t been able to blog as much as my heart desires lately. Learning to become a broker has been a time consuming task but very fulfilling. I did however get a blog request! Today I am going to be talking about affirmations, healing, and balancing yourself. I am by no means an expert on any of the above, but I have spent a great deal of time researching and practicing affirmations and techniques to find peace within myself while I heal. Everyone needs to heal and balance at all times in our life. You might not have experienced any sort of traumas or even feel the need to work on healing yourself, but we have all experienced pain and stress in our life. You would be surprised how long you can subconsciously carry around past hurts and how abusive you can be to yourself without even realizing it.

Generally people are familiar with affirmations and the purpose of them. For those who are not, here is the definition of an affirmation taken from http://www.mindtools.com

Affirmations are positive, specific statements that help you to overcome self-sabotaging, negative thoughts. They help you visualize, and believe in, what you’re affirming to yourself, helping you to make positive changes to your life and career.

There are limitless ways to practice affirmations. Here are just a few. Try them out and see what works best for you. The key to remember is that you MUST believe the affirmation. If you don’t at first keep telling yourself it over and over until you do, or perhaps try rephrasing it.

Write it down: many people practice the post it notes on the mirror affirmation. It is self explanatory. You write it down and stick it where it will quite literally stare you in the face. I have attempted this method before but find it does not work for me. It becomes too easy to start overlooking it when you get used to it being there. For this to be effective, you may try posting them different places every few days. Your front door, on your coffee pot, the fridge, etc.

Say it to yourself: we all have an inner voice. You are probably reading this in your inner voice and then your thoughts speak back to it. I fully support talking to yourself. It has gotten me through so many hard times in life. I am at a point where I truly believe I have my own back and can overcome anything just by talking to myself. I will get into speaking to yourself in more depth when I get into the healing aspect of this blog.

Journal it: this is a more involved method of writing it down obviously. The part I like about having an affirmations journal is you can go back and read them. It can serve as a subtle reminder how far you have come on this journey through life. What you wanted to overcome 6 months ago you may look back at and realize how trivial or unnecessary it was to fret over it. Or you may realize how much your confidence in yourself has grown. Personal reflection is an important part of life and I find myself frequently re-reading the many journals I own. It can also help you get into more of a routine. If you are only speaking them to yourself, you may get lazy and I believe affirmations should be an important part of each day. You wouldn’t go to work without brushing your teeth would you? Your soul deserves to be nurtured and cleansed too!

So now you are on the way to kind self talk and building yourself up with affirmations. Shit happens in life though. Sometimes, you need an extra push to get you out of a rut. Anyone who knows me, knows I am a big believer in our chakras and energies. This is why I started the study and practice of Reiki. You don’t have to know reiki though to cleanse and balance your chakras. Even if you are not a huge believer in energy, you will find that taking time to relax your mind and body has extreme benefits. I have never once sat down to meditate and got up and said “that was bullshit I am so much more stressed now.” Meditation is a wonderful tool, that when used correctly has many benefits. It also requires practice. A common misconception is that your mind needs to be completely blank for meditation to work. This is not correct. In fact, that is impossible. That inner voice I spoke about earlier is constantly humming along. I am going to give some pointers though on how to make your meditation session more effective and explain different types of meditation.

Guided Meditation: I am fairly well practiced at meditating, but sometimes I can’t be bothered to even put effort into meditation which is essentially, not very difficult. I have an app on my phone that provides guided meditations. There are a lot of different apps you can use. Most of them have soft background music and a soothing voice of a woman guiding you through the steps of meditating. I use guided when I am feeling very high strung, can’t sleep, or am anxious. It allows me to rely on someone else and solely focus on relaxation.

Chakra Balancing: Again, there are multiple methods of doing this. Each person has their own preferred way. You can find a ton of methods on the internet. This is the way I like to do it…I encourage you to try many different ways until you find something that feels the best for you. I have a massage table I use for Reiki, so I set that up but you can do it on the floor, a bed, a couch…wherever you feel the best. Lay on your back with your eyes closed and take a few deep breaths to start. Imagine one at a time the energy swirling inside of you where your chakras are. Start at your crown and work your way down to your root. If you are not familiar with them, here is a chart

I like to place a corresponding stone or crystal over each chakra for healing and balancing. You don’t have to. You can simply focus on balancing out each source of energy. Sometimes you may find you only need to focus on one or a few that might feel out of wack. If you aren’t sure what chakra is out of balance but you know you aren’t feeling right, you can look up how they effect your mood and feelings. I have a tab also on this page that goes into more depth (click on crystals). This will also tell you which crystals to use for chakra meditation. I do this form of meditation anywhere between 5-30 minutes. If I am doing Reiki on myself it’s a little longer.

Something important to remember in all forms of meditation is that thoughts will come into your mind. The correct way to to handle them is to imagine them floating in and out. Or even if they stay, focus on not being bothered by them. They are simply with you. Meditation is a treat you give yourself to relax so your thoughts should not be given any allowance to bother you at this time.

OK! So now you have worked on speaking kindly to yourself and treating yourself to some relaxation but what about the things we cannot control? Like how others speak to us? We might not be able to control what others say, but we can control how we internally react. I am a big into beating myself up if someone brings toxicity into my life. I take personal responsibility for it which is not fair to myself. Here are some methods of coping with toxic people and how to not let it undo all the hard work you have put into your internal peace.

Speak to your inner child: This is perhaps one of my favorite methods of overcoming pretty traumatic experiences like breakups, fights with friends, or problems with family. That little inner voice I was talking about earlier comes into play here. I imagine myself sitting in my elementary school library (somewhere inner child loved). We are sitting together on the steps where the librarian used to read to us. Big me and little me. I always start the conversation with “hey little, how you doing today?” and little will respond. At first you may feel silly, but eventually you will be surprised at how much you may have been suppressing. You may find that little you is pissed off at big you. One thing I often have to say to little is “I’m so sorry you feel I have abandoned you in the past, but I am here now and will take care of you from now on.” You can speak to little even if you aren’t going through anything. Sometimes it’s nice to just have a conversation to tap into how you are coping with life in general.

Bounce off method: This is learned in therapy and it is highly effective if you are like me and take responsibility for everyone else’s actions. Allow yourself to reflect on what a person has said to you. Then ask yourself “does this have to do with me? Am I the cause for this person’s behavior?” Sometimes, you might be. If you are, you need to take responsibility for it, yet allow yourself to learn from it and grow. Take the steps needed to correct the situation. Many times we are not the source of a person’s bad mood though. If the answer is “No, I am not the cause of this” imagine the words sliding off you or like you are in a bubble and they are bouncing off. Take a deep breath and allow yourself to move on. We take on so many burdens we do not need to. Another person’s bad mood should not be one of them.

So that is how I get through life and I am still learning how to do these things everyday. We need to be kind to ourselves. If no one has told you today: You deserve to be at peace within yourself. You deserve the love you have. You deserve happiness. You are allowed to eat the cupcake or buy the shoes.